One prior art infrared amplification system provided by Lightspeed Technologies, Inc., for uses, such as in a classroom, includes one or more microphones for converting a presenter's voice into infrared signal representations thereof and transmitting these infrared signals to an infrared receiver. In this known embodiment, the infrared receiver is mounted to the ceiling of a room. This receiver has a black colored base on which a circular array of infrared signal sensors, in this case diodes, is placed. The array of diodes is formed by a first circle of 16 diodes extending perpendicularly outwardly from the base. A surrounding circle 16 of diodes is also included with the diodes of the surrounding circle being tilted inwardly at a 45 degree angle to create a circular array 32 of diodes of vertically positioned diodes that each have an angled diode therebetween. A red circular dome infrared lens overlies the diode array. An apertured RF signal shield is interposed between the infrared lens and diodes of the array. The infrared receiver is connected by electrical wires to an amplifier which in turn is connected to a speaker with both the amplifier and speaker being at remote locations from the receiver. The receiver is capable of receiving signals from more than one channel (16 diodes per channel) that are separated for amplification. Various components can be coupled to the amplifier such as a VCR or DVD to provide additional signal sources for the amplifier and speaker. A bending wave speaker from New Transducers Limited (a NXT™ speaker) is one example of a suitable speaker that has been used in such a system.
Although offering many advantages, a system such as described above can be expensive and time consuming to install. In addition, there are other disadvantages associated with such a system.
Therefore, a need exists for improvements in infrared signal based amplification systems.